by Kal Spriggs
“I sort of got that,” I grimaced. I hated Drakkus and everything I'd seen of it.
“The Red Badges aren't here to stop crime or to conscript anyone. They're not police for the Houses, whatever Simon said about them. They work for the Emperor. They're here to keep the Barrens, the Old Town, separate from the rest. They're here to contain the Barrens.”
“Contain?” I asked in confusion.
Jonna sighed again. Then she shot a narrow-eyed look at Simon. “Follow me,” she growled. She stalked in Simon's direction, but she didn't slow as we passed him, “I've got to educate the fos on things, since you fed him a line.”
Simon's eyebrows went up in mock surprise, “Me? I just call things how I see them, Jonna!” I almost would have believed his innocence, except for the wicked twinkle in his eyes.
“Well, since you're so good at seeing things,” Jonna said sweetly, “You can keep watch for Murfee and Danggar, tonight, while I show the fos how things really work.” She tossed that over her shoulder as we headed for the lair's exit.
Simon's innocent expression soured. “Well played.”
Jonna led the way to the door and then up and out. As we came into an alleyway, she led me over to a ladder, and then we travelled along the rooftops, pausing here and there to climb higher and higher. I started getting nervous as we paused at one point, on a narrow ledge that overlooked a dizzying drop. Jonna didn't seem to even notice the fall, though, she just took her bearings and led me onwards.
I'd heard the sounds of space craft taking off and landing, before, but the noise seemed to be growing louder and louder.
We came up on one of the spires that overlooked the rest of the city. Unlike the others, though, this one didn’t have any lights on it. It was a dark, looming presence. Jonna led the way up it, climbing rusted iron ladders and walking along narrow ledges. At last we came up on a rooftop that overlooked a broad, open area, I got glimpses through the rain of a pillar of fire as a large space ship took off. It seemed we'd come near the spaceport.
She went right up to the edge and took a seat, dangling her feet over the drop. She looked back at me, the rain dripping off her patchwork hood. Jonna patted the edge next to her. “Have a seat.”
I gingerly moved up, sitting near the edge and looking down. We were much higher than I’d realized we’d come, I saw. It was maybe fifty meters or so down to the next ledge. We were two hundred or more meters above the street, though we had an excellent vantage point. “The spaceport?” I asked.
“Yeah, but wait,” she said. “You'll see.”
We waited in silence. I wondered if she were trying to point out some detail of the spaceport or something. I took the time to study the entrance below us. There were a number of guards, I could see their black uniforms from here and I could just barely make out the large, metallic red badges they wore on their left breasts. The entrance they guarded had a full-body scanner and everyone going through paused in those scanners. There were no buildings along the wall of the spaceport, nothing up against it where I thought I could easily climb over. I saw drones flying that perimeter too, so even if I had a ladder or something, I didn’t know if I’d be able to slip through unnoticed.
I did notice a second line and what looked like a second gate. That line was longer, though, and the people in it were being searched much more thoroughly.
The constant rain began to ebb and I began to see more and more of the spaceport. There were kilometers of warehouses and launch pads. I saw huge ships, bigger than I would have expected for atmospheric use.
Then, as if someone had drawn aside a curtain, I could see a city.
It lay on the far side of the spaceport and I couldn't imagine anything more different from the Barrens. The buildings rose up hundreds, maybe thousands of meters, towering over the spaceport and even the Barrens. They glittered with lights, too. It was a shining city, a massive glittering jewel that took my breath away.
“That,” Jonna's voice had gone soft, “is the Heart of Drakkus.”
“The Heart?” I asked, glancing at her. I couldn't help but notice that the light from the distant city softened her normally harsh expression. She looked pretty. More than that, it was as if all her hard edges had softened for the moment.
“That's the capitol,” she gave a nod, “the Imperial Seat. The official name is New Haven, but everyone calls it the Heart of Drakkus or just the Heart.”
“How do they have that...” I gestured at the distant city, “and this...” I waved at the sprawling barrens. The black, ugly windowless buildings that stretched as far as I could see.
“The Pact,” she said in an absent voice.
“Pact?” I hated feeling like I didn't know anything.
Apparently my frustration came through and she shot me an amused look, “Sorry, fos, I forget sometimes just how new you are.”
I sighed, “I have a name, you know.”
“And I'll use it when you've earned it, fos,” she snorted. “Now, the Pact, that's something useful to know about, but we can talk that later.” She hiked a thumb at the Barrens, stretching out behind her. “All that is part of the Old Town. Factories and cheap housing and all that. When they first settled Drakkus, it was a refugee colony, from back on Old Earth. There were a lot of little conflicts and a whole lot of refugees. So the UN offered to transport and house refugees, and they had some special factories they wanted to open up, while they were at it.”
“Special factories?” I asked.
“I'll get to that, later,” Jonna answered. “Anyway, they shipped a few million refugees out here and only when they got them here, did my ancestors realize that this wasn't a mercy mission so much as indentured servitude. The UN Star Guard put them to work assembling buildings, fusing stone into these ugly structures. Then they put them to work assembling the chemical factories, and when those were done, they started them on manufacturing a variety of chemicals. Drugs, mostly, plus some pharmaceuticals and stuff that was illegal even back then. And they paid in food supplies that they shipped out here as 'donations.' Those cargo ships went back to civilized space, all the way back to Old Earth, often enough, laden down with the drugs and chemicals they had us manufacturing.”
That explained how the Barrens was so ugly. I didn't see how it explained anything else, though.
“You need to learn to control your expression better,” Jonna noted. “Anyway, the Star Portal vanished, the Star Guard lost contact with Earth. The supply ships stopped coming and the peacekeeper forced here to oversee us mostly packed up and left. Things weren't great there for a long while. Food was tight, our world isn't very good for growing crops. Not enough light. This rain makes everything moldy and it rains pretty much year-round.” She gestured up at the sky, “You get a clear night like this when the wind is just right and...” she paused, “there it is.”
Appearing through the thinning clouds and absolutely dominating night sky was a massive planet. It had to be a gas giant and it was really close. “Is that...”
She gave me a nod, “It's a gas giant, The Great Dragon,” she pointed a huge cloud formation that wound through the planet's clouds. It did sort of look like a dragon, the long serpentine form dark against the bright clouds. “We're on one of its moons, Drakkus, which is a bit smaller than Old Earth. We're tidally locked with Great Dragon, but its rotation means we still get a day, night cycle with our star.”
I squinted at her, “You sure know a lot.”
“I wasn't born here,” she said, “I was born out there.” Jonna waved at the distant city.
“How does one get to live there, anyway?” I asked.
She didn't answer for a moment. When she did, she pointed down near the ground, a short distance away, “See that line?”
I looked in that direction, careful not to lean too far over the edge. I saw a group of ragged men and women in line. I had assumed it was for the spaceport, but I wasn't sure.
“That's people volunteering to join the Drakkus Imperial Space Korps
,” Jonna told me. “They'll screen them for any physical or mental issues and if they pass, they're in.”
“Simon told me the Red Badges conscripted people off the streets,” I squinted down at the line. These people didn't look like conscripts. They looked ragged, but most of them had their heads up and were talking as they waited their turn to enter the gates.
“Simon has an overactive imagination and a lot of grudges,” Jonna snorted. “Anyone who volunteers for service and finished out their term, they and their family get a free pass to the Heart, their ticket out of the Barrens. Their immediate family, they get to stay over there,” she pointed at a walled compound. “Communal housing, monitored by the red badges. They get three square meals a day and vocational training.”
“That's it?” I asked in surprise. I wondered why the entire Barrens hadn't cleared out. “How long is a term?”
“Ten years,” she answered. “They give you and your family the life extension treatments, though. But once you sign up, there's no way out, you have to finish your enlistment term... or you die.”
“Die?” My head snapped around. “What about people that just can't handle the training?”
She looked at me, her eyes dark, “They finish their terms or they're buried with honors.”
***
Heading back from the overlook point, I had a lot to chew on. I'd assumed that Drakkus was only what I'd seen. Now it seemed there was a lot more to it than I'd thought. Jonna led the way back, taking a different route and pausing now and then to look around.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“The Phog,” she answered. “When we get a bit of clear air like this, we almost always get the Phog.”
“What is--”
She waved a hand, silencing me. “Be quiet, we're in Crooked Dagger territory right now. They live up here on the rooftops and we really don't want to be fighting them right now.”
I shut up.
“We need to hurry or else...” She trailed off. “Too late. Look.” Jonna pointed down near the street, still twenty or more meters below us.
I peered down in the gloom, lit mostly by the light of the gas giant and stars above us. At first I thought it was steam or smoke, but the greenish cloud spread out, boiling and bubbling down the street. People scattered ahead of it, many of them running. A few were trying to climb the sides of the buildings to get out of its reach.
All manner of creatures skittered up the walls or slinked away, trying to escape from it. Animals I hadn't even noticed, birds and lizards and even a couple of the bigger civets crawled up and away from the moving wave of greenish vapor.
The Phog, whatever it was, wasn't fast. It came at a walking pace. Bubbling and roiling, tendrils of it working along the walls and ground. It was like a living thing. Jonna and I watched as a group of three or four people skidded to a halt below us in a dead-end. “Should we try to help them?” I asked.
Jonna just shook her head.
They shouted and one of them pounded on a door, pleading with someone to open it. The Phog rolled over them, a slow tidal wave that struck as one of them tried to climb out.
I could see them moving inside the cloud, the greenish vapor distorting the sounds of their voices. The noises changed quickly, it sounded now like they were laughing or crying or both. I gave Jonna a look but she was staring downward, her expression hard.
I took a step back from the edge as the vapor boiled upwards, tendrils of it rising to within a meter of where we stood. Jonna stood her ground, though. “It keeps to the streets,” she said, talking of it as if were a living thing.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The chemical and drug factories, normally they vent their byproducts into the clouds. Normally the rain washes it out of the air, absorbing a lot of it and dispersing it,” she answered. “Which is why everyone filters water before they drink it. But when we get a clear night, like this, the stuff doesn't rise. Someone told me there's an air inversion. It just bubbles through the streets until we get rain to knock it down again.”
“What's in it?” I asked.
“Everything,” she pointed at a moving form below us. It looked like a person, but if so, he was crawling on all fours and pausing to roll in the street. The sound of insane laughter echoed up from the fog. After a moment, the laughter turned into sobbing.
“It'll seep through your skin, so a mask doesn't work. Getting indoors protects you some. Staying up here is best,” she sighed. “We'll need to stay up here until it starts raining again, probably a few hours after that.” She turned away from the drop and the Phog, hanging menacingly below.
We'd gone a short distance, winding our way along roof-tops, when I heard the sound of raised voices. This wasn't the manic sound from the streets below, though, this was something different. I paused and Jonna looked back at me, her expression curious. I looked in the direction of the noises. Sounds carried oddly, with the flat surfaces of the walls and rooftops and the muting quality of the Phog below us. But it sounded like the voices were just off to the side, around the ledge from the building we'd just crossed onto, but the other direction from where Jonna had been headed.
I gestured that way and her lips went in a hard line. No she mouthed to me.
I heard a cry of pain, though, and that settled things for me. I at least needed to see what this was. It sounded like someone was in trouble.
I worked my way along the ledge until I could peek around the corner. I could hear Jonna sigh as she followed after me, but she didn't try to stop me.
There were four Crooked Daggers just around the corner, the white painted knives stark against their dark clothing. They'd caught something in a net and they held that net dangling over the drop. At this point we were thirty or forty meters above the ground still, I'd guess, but it was hard to tell with the Phog.
“Drop it!” one of the boys in the group laughed. I realized the creature in the net was a civet, only after it spoke.
“No!” the civet hissed at them. “No drop!”
“Little vermin shouldn't have come in our territory,” Francis spoke up. I recognized his voice and in the light of the Dragon, I could recognize his features. “Your kind isn't welcome. Red Badges got a bounty on you.”
“No drop,” the civet insisted. “Daggers not collect bounty if you drop me. Fight, yes? Kill for bounty?”
“I'm not letting you loose,” Francis sneered. “I know better than that. You stay nice and wrapped up in our little trap.” He elbowed one of his gang. “Told you the net would get one of them. They run from the Phog same as everyone else, even if they do stink, they aren't immune to the Phog.”
His group laughed again. One of them brandished a long metal rod, sharpened to a point and he leaned out and jabbed at the civet, which tried to shy away from it.
Common sense told me that fighting four of them on a narrow ledge was a dumb idea. But I couldn't just leave the creature. It was intelligent. Maybe not as smart as a person, but still able to talk. They were going to kill it, either with torture or just dropping it to the streets below.
I looked back at Jonna who started shaking her head. Too many, she mouthed at me.
Still, on the narrow ledge, it wasn't like they could all come at me at once, right? I looked back, judging the distance. The Crooked Daggers were only three or four meters away. I could probably rush them. Maybe push one or two of the smaller boys off the ledge...
I hesitated as I considered that, though. A fall from this height might kill them. That didn't consider what the Phog might do to them, either. Was I prepared to kill people over this civet?”
“No!” the thing hissed again. “Fight me! Fight fair!”
“Screw that,” Francis laughed, “Give me the spear, I'll jab him through the head and we'll cook him up as dinner. My da' used to tell me these things made good eating.”
That was too much for me. I rushed around the corner and closed with them. I caught the first boy by the shoulders before he'd e
ven seen me, slammed him head-first into the wall and then flung him out of my way. As I did so, I saw he was tied off on some kind of rope, so he just swung out of my way and then back into the wall with a thud as I moved onto the next.
Francis saw me and the next of the Crooked Daggers had a moment to react, spinning to face me just as I swung at him with a fist. The wiry boy dodged out of my way and then pushed off from the wall, a maneuver I hadn't expected. He swung out over the void and then landed on the ledge behind me, even as Francis and the fourth boy squared off against me.
“Well, well,” Francis jeered. “Look what we have here. A double catch.”
I might have bit off more than I could chew, I realized. I hesitated, looking back at the boy behind me and the two ahead of me. Now I was surrounded and none of them had to worry about the fall. “Give me the spear,” Francis spoke up.
His companion passed over the long, sharp rod of metal. Francis feinted with it, but it forced me to flinch back. The three conscious Crooked Daggers laughed in response. “Well, we can't cook him up, but we can sure take care of this little stray, can't we?” Francis chuckled. “Getting another beggar and thief off the streets.”
“Doing the Emperor's work, we are,” one of the others laughed.
“Where do you want it, Ragabond?” Francis jeered, jabbing another feint at me, “through the eye or...”
He didn't get a chance to finish. The unconscious Crooked Dagger suddenly swung in, bouncing along the wall like a wrecking ball, tangling with the boy behind me and, as I ducked back, dragging them both forward into Francis and the last one.
Francis jumped out of the path, but the ropes of the other two boys still entangled with his, dragging him backwards with a surprised yelp as he and his three companions entangled and bounced into one another. I used that surprise, rushing them and punching at them while they were still confused. I grabbed Francis by the back of his spiked hair and slammed his face into the wall until he went limp. The entire pile swung back, then and I went flat to the wall while the remaining conscious boy was dragged back with a yelp, his fingers raking the wall and me for purchase. Jonna tackled the pile, elbowing him into unconsciousness. She glared at me, giving the various boys a few extra hits while staring at me. “Next time, you idiot, you should listen to me.”
